Catapult to future: Facebook 'building $1.5-billion data center' in US to conquer Internet

An employee walks past servers in one of four server rooms at the Facebook Data Center on April 19, 2012 in Forest City, North Carolina. (AFP Photo) / AFP

Facebook has been revealed to be the company behind a $1.5-billion installation under construction in Iowa, already dubbed the “most technologically advanced data center in the world,” according to US media.

For over a year, the mysterious project in Altoona, Iowa, a town
of just over 15,000 people, was a topic of heated speculation –
what company is spending $1.5 billion on a data center occupying
130,000 square meters, with servers and databanks?

Now, legislative sources have revealed to Iowa newspaper the Des
Moines Register that they are “finalizing some elements” for
Siculus Inc. and its 'Project Catapult,' believed to be a Facebook
initiative.

The three-building installation is expected to be completed in two
stages, each worth $500 million, with the final price tag for the
facility reaching as high as $1.5 billion, analysts said.

Facebook already has three similar facilities: In Prineville,
Oregon($210 million); in Forest City, North Carolina ($450 million)
and in Luleå, Sweden (worth $760 million). The Altoona installation
would be the largest, worth more than all three others combined.
All of Facebook's data centers are also brand new, having been
built in 2010 at the earliest.

Ideal location

Facebook's Catapult will join Google and Microsoft, which are
also building IT hubs in the region. Another site lobbied fiercely
to host the Facebook facility – ‘Project Edge’ in Kearney, Nebraska
– but Altoona won out for several reasons.

Any data center needs a high-capacity fiber optic cable system,
like the one running along Interstate Highway 80 near Altoona.
Reliable power supplies are another crucial element – despite
claims of 'green' energy powering the project, the proximity to a
large power station appears to have contributed to Facebook’s
decision to construct its datacenter in Altoona. The Duane Arnold
Energy Center, the only nuclear power plant in Iowa, is also about
150 km away from the site.

The announced use of solar arrays, fuel cells and wind energy in
Altoona would likely be unable to fully satisfy the power needs of
such a huge energy-intensive facility, but development of renewable
power sources in the area might bring Facebook certain tax credits
anyway, the Des Moines Register reported. And like Facebook's other
two US data centers, the Altoona facility will also likely be
equipped with backup diesel generators.

A large data center also needs extensive water cooling – the
Saylorville Lake reservoir on the Des Moines River is about 20km
away. Iowa is also a relatively safe from natural disasters, as
neither hurricanes nor earthquakes happen frequently in the
region.

Finally, the installation needs to be near major highways, and
Altoona is located near three major arteries: Interstates 80 and 35
and US Highway 65.

A master plan?

In October 2012, Facebook registered 1 billion active users a
month; founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company is now aiming for 2
billion users.

Such growth would necessarily require new data centers to be built.
Matz Engman, chief executive of Luleå Business Agency, told the
UK's Sun in January that the construction of a Facebook data center
in Luleå is “just the beginning... What we want is to be the
actual hub for all data traffic in Europe.”

The construction of the Altoona data center could empower
Facebook to broaden its horizons beyond just European and US data
traffic. US media reports last month suggest some clues to their
plans.

And a cyber-security directive signed in February by US
President Barack Obama, increased the mandatory security for
private-sector firms such as Gmail and Facebook, which might soon
be considered “critical infrastructure” entities and
asked to share information with the federal
government.

Moreover, the US government has long vowed to use the Internet
to advance its foreign policy. The construction
of multi-billion-dollar facilities by giants like Facebook and
Google might fit within this framework.